[xzins]

Sometimes definitions help and sometimes definitions confuse.

ID IS A CRITICISM of evolutionary theory. The basic criticism is that complexity is so vast that the available time that evolution postulates is not sufficient to bring about all the varieties of life and complexity that we see.

From that criticism, the ID proponents suggested that the only means of achieving the evident complexity was by some kind of intelligent design. There is no attempt on the part of ID founders to insist that the design(er) must be personal.

The point was that design can deal with the time problem.

[ralice]

ID IS A CRITICISM of evolutionary theory. The basic criticism is that complexity is so vast that the available time that evolution postulates is not sufficient to bring about all the varieties of life and complexity that we see.

Your first statement is correct. ID is a criticism, but is not one supported by any data... so it is only opinion, and not science.

[Alamo-Girl]

Thank you so much for including me in your sidebar!

Sometimes definitions help and sometimes definitions confuse.

That is true and yet without definitions - if the words don't have intelligible meaning - there can be no communication.

I propose that most people who have formed an opinion about intelligent design do not realize what the hypothesis actually says:

That certain features of the universe and life are best explained by intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.

"Certain features" are not "all features" - thus it does not substitute for the theory of evolution. And like the theory of evolution, it is therefore not a theory of origins.

"Intelligent cause" is not stipulated. It could be a phenomenon (such as an emergent property of self-organizing complexity or fractal intelligence) or an agent (such as God, collective consciousness, aliens, Gaia, etc.)

For instance, if it is determined that the selection of a mate is the "best explanation" for "certain features" in "life" then the hypothesis is vindicated.

"Undirected processes" suggest that randomness can occur in physical reality. But of a truth, one cannot say anything is random in the system without knowing what the system "is" - and that question is not yet answered.

Jeepers, science has not even yet observed or made ordinary matter (Higgs field/boson) - and if it does (CERN tests), the remaining 95% of the critical density is not yet understood. And that's without considering spatial and temporal dimensionality.

The bottom line is that order cannot rise out of chaos in an unguided physical system. But when you look at the cosmology - whether inflationary theory, multi-verse, multi-world, ekpyrotic, imaginary time, cyclic, etc. - physical causality relies on geometry and yet there was a beginning of geometry, of space/time.

That means in the void from which there was a beginning there was no space, no time, no energy, no matter, no physical laws, no physical constants, no logic, no qualia, etc. - and most especially, no physical causation.

IOW, the cause of physical causation was uncaused - and the only possible uncaused cause is God.